ALOK JHA arrived at Imperial College in 1994 determined to become a particle physicist. A year of indescribably complex mathematics later, he shelved his plans to become the next Richard Feynman and began to concentrate instead on the music reviews for the college newspaper. Physics degree complete, he moved wholeheartedly into news reporting for Research Fortnight, a small science policy newsletter.
In 2003 he joined The Guardian as a science correspondent, part of the launch team for Life, then the weekly science section. He now mainly writes news, features and comment on everything from botany to space physics for the daily science page in the new and improvedGuardian, while contributing regularly to the other sections of the paper.